Playing SW:TOR using wine for Ubuntu, Android or iOS

I wonder how many of us are using wine under Ubuntu, Android or even Mac?

We are not being counted because our system response to swtor is that it that we are using Microsoft Windows. I really do not care if you shot yourself in the foot by not supporting us. The desktop platform is dying and very fast. In 5 years we will see diversity of technology like we never have before. Many of us will jump ship faster than you can say "Jedi" if you cut off the ability to play in any fashion. Few will stick by your side and claim the infamous this OS is better than that circle jerk.

There is a chart going around that shows the subscriber count. Unsure of the accruacy, but it shows a massive drop right after launch. No other MMO has had that and came back. I wonder how many were effected by the wine issues after that patch and are now gone? Is there a correlation? Was this even considered?

SWTOR now seems to be working again - the Linux/Mac community for wine found a work-a-round. Blizzard (sorry to mention competitor) does its best to make sure that thier game can play okay under wine without supporting Linux directly. It has been successful for them and it takes very few cycles away from dev. I'm just saying it might be bad on your business model if you ignore us and make your game so that others cannot play directly or indirectly regardless of the OS.

Sad part is that it is hard to get an accurate count of how many there are of us out here. Ten or twenty people? Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? FYI, SW:TOR is the most requested game in history for wine support.

On behalf of the few or the many, please do not effect up our ability to play under wine again. This too will go ignored likely. But hey it was a shot.

I wonder how many of us are using wine under Ubuntu, Android or even Mac?

That is an excellent question. I would suspect relatively few, just because of the inconvenience factor and because until recently, SWTOR didn't work very well with WINE. But it remains an excellent question. Disclaimer: I'm primarily a,linux user.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vaugerant

We are not being counted because our system response to swtor is that it that we are using Microsoft Windows. I really do not care if you shot yourself in the foot by not supporting us. The desktop platform is dying and very fast. In 5 years we will see diversity of technology like we never have before. Many of us will jump ship faster than you can say "Jedi" if you cut off the ability to play in any fashion. Few will stick by your side and claim the infamous this OS is better than that circle jerk.

There's an erroneous statement here, and that is the desktop is dying. It isn't. In terms of market share, the last statistics I saw showed that desktops were relatively stagnant. There is some recent evidence that in terms of the totality of current games, consoles are dropping market share, but that really doesn't matter when you consider that the gaming market has expanded dramatically recently. If the number of linux/windows/android users increase, then games will be made for them. If the numbers decline, then eventually the market will recognize this. As for OS's, did you know that OS2 is still around? That programs are still being written for it? Operating systems are more persistent than you might think.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vaugerant

There is a chart going around that shows the subscriber count. Unsure of the accruacy, but it shows a massive drop right after launch. No other MMO has had that and came back. I wonder how many were effected by the wine issues after that patch and are now gone? Is there a correlation? Was this even considered?

There's also a chart that compares the number of humans to the number of sheep in any given country. Any idiot can make a chart. Seeing as how the game came with a month's subscription free, an immediate drop in subscribers seems unlikely at best. Further, Bioware and EA have stated that subscriptions and sales have increased. Maybe they are engaged in a fraudulent marketing campaign, but since the truth will come out, that seems unlikely as well. They are in the best position to know what the actual numbers are.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vaugerant

SWTOR now seems to be working again - the Linux/Mac community for wine found a work-a-round. Blizzard (sorry to mention competitor) does its best to make sure that their game can play okay under wine without supporting Linux directly. It has been successful for them and it takes very few cycles away from dev. I'm just saying it might be bad on your business model if you ignore us and make your game so that others cannot play directly or indirectly regardless of the OS.

SWTOR has always worked in the OS it was designed for, Windows. That it didn't work in WINE for a while was unfortunate, but not really the fault of the developers. "Nice store you have here, it would be sad if someone decided to burn it down..." I'd love for Bioware to emulate Blizzard in terms of Optional OS friendliness. I would love it if they put out a linux native version of SWTOR much as Guild Wars is available in Linux (Bet you didn't know it was!). If they see a market for it, they will pursue it. Nothing I've heard or read suggests there is much of a market for it, much as I hate admitting that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vaugerant

Sad part is that it is hard to get an accurate count of how many there are of us out here. Ten or twenty people? Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? FYI, SW:TOR is the most requested game in history for wine support.

Too true. Some hard numbers would be lovely.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vaugerant

On behalf of the few or the many, please do not effect up our ability to play under wine again. This too will go ignored likely. But hey it was a shot.

You forgot the magic word. "Please do not break our ability to play your lovely game under WINE." is perhaps a better way to phrase what you're asking.

There's an erroneous statement here, and that is the desktop is dying. It isn't. In terms of market share, the last statistics I saw showed that desktops were relatively stagnant. There is some recent evidence that in terms of the totality of current games, consoles are dropping market share, but that really doesn't matter when you consider that the gaming market has expanded dramatically recently. If the number of linux/windows/android users increase, then games will be made for them. If the numbers decline, then eventually the market will recognize this. As for OS's, did you know that OS2 is still around? That programs are still being written for it? Operating systems are more persistent than you might think.

You are right. We do not know what the future may bring, but we do know that technology and technology companies are putting money into tablets and laptops NOT desktops. We also know that many companies are putting dev cycles into 'browser' technology for games so that their games are not platform dependant. OS2 is very much around, but these are normally in a small business accounting environment.

Quote:

There's also a chart that compares the number of humans to the number of sheep in any given country. Any idiot can make a chart. Seeing as how the game came with a month's subscription free, an immediate drop in subscribers seems unlikely at best. Further, Bioware and EA have stated that subscriptions and sales have increased. Maybe they are engaged in a fraudulent marketing campaign, but since the truth will come out, that seems unlikely as well. They are in the best position to know what the actual numbers are.

You are right about Bioware being in the best position for numbers. It does seem very early for them to do 7 day friend passes in comparison with other games in the past. My guess is they are concerned. My next guess is that the next quarter will show significant growth due to both the 7 day passes and wine working again. We will see.

Quote:

SWTOR has always worked in the OS it was designed for, Windows. That it didn't work in WINE for a while was unfortunate, but not really the fault of the developers. "Nice store you have here, it would be sad if someone decided to burn it down..." I'd love for Bioware to emulate Blizzard in terms of Optional OS friendliness. I would love it if they put out a linux native version of SWTOR much as Guild Wars is available in Linux (Bet you didn't know it was!). If they see a market for it, they will pursue it. Nothing I've heard or read suggests there is much of a market for it, much as I hate admitting that.

Yes, I knew there was a GW client. Game is not for me.

Quote:

You forgot the magic word. "Please do not break our ability to play your lovely game under WINE." is perhaps a better way to phrase what you're asking.

break > effect. Fair enough.

My entire argument here that they can ignore the market for a pure Linux/Mac client - just please do not break the ability to play in wine or they may do so at a risk of losing customers.

Wow I didn't know wine existed and I searched high and low for a solution on my mac (other than bootcamp and paralelles), but yes I to am a mac user that runs this game (27" iMac). I recently migrated from my gaming pc to this since I can play the other games I play hardcore as well (Left4dead2, Css - pretty much anything valve).

I'll check that wine out and see how it runs against the bootcamp partition.

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The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites.